The house was now full of people, and they cheered the newcomers; there was not a little laughter and joking when some one told the visiting statesmen that a swarm of bees was overhead.
"Boys," Uncle Hannibal cried, "do you suppose there's much honey up there ?" He asked the Squire whether Egyptian bees were good honey gatherers, and laughed heartily when the old gentleman told him what robbers they were and how savagely they stung.
"Judge!" Uncle Hannibal cried to Judge Peters.

"That's what's the matter with our Maine politics.

The Egyptians are robbing us of our liberties!" That idea seemed to stick in his mind, for later, when he began his address, he referred humorously to several prominent leaders of the opposing party as bold, bad Egyptians.

"We shall have to smoke them out," he said, laughing.

"And I guess that the voters of this district are going to do it, and the boys, too," he continued, pointing up to us on the ladder.
He had refused to speak from the pulpit, and so stood on the floor of the house--in what he described as his proper place; the pulpit, he said, was no place for politics.
After so many years I cannot pretend to remember all that Uncle Hannibal said; besides, my attention was largely engrossed in directing the nozzle of the smoker at those cracks between the laths.